The Lofties (The Echelon Book 2) by Ramona Finn (no david read aloud .txt) 📕

I smacked my neck again, scratched furiously. The bite had already healed, but that itch, that itch—

“That was amazing, though.” Ben patted the blasters. “I thought I’d stump you for sure.”

“A week ago, you would have.” An odd paranoia gripped me, and I closed my eyes tight. I quested out again, casting my senses across the desert. Stillwater’s stockpile hummed, its signal faint with distance. I groped out beyond it, past the foothills, to the mountains. Nothing called back to me, no crackle of static. I exhaled through my teeth. “We should head back,” I said. “They’ll start dinner without us.”

“They wouldn’t dare.” Ben swung back toward Stillwater, but I gripped his arm.

“Promise you’ll tell me, if the talks shift to Echelon.”

Ben made a hissing sound, maybe laughter, maybe annoyance. “I promised that already. What’s wrong? Don’t you trust me?”

I watched the sand batter the windshield and swirl off into the night. “If you had to choose—”

“Don’t.”

“No, but after you promised me, if your aunt made you swear—”

“I said, don’t.” Ben slapped the steering wheel. “Either you trust me, or you don’t. I gave you my word. Now, are we good?”

My breath caught in my throat. Ben had gone tense, the tendons standing out on his neck. He’d always been honest with me, more than I’d been with him. He’d always been honest—but he hadn’t answered my question.

I slid my hand over anyway, till my pinky brushed his thigh.

“We’re good,” I said. “I trust you.”

Get your copy of The Skyseekers

Available May 12th, 2021.

www.ramonafinn.com

BLURB

The secret is locked in her mind—and they’ll do anything to get it.

Gererations ago, humanity was devastated by a virus that wiped billions from the planet. If not for AmeriGlobe’s rigid control over society’s remnants, and VaxWell’s immunity-boosting biomods, humans would’ve gone the way of the dinosaurs. But a sinister purpose underlies the need for adherence to the strict rules—and it has nothing to do with the ZERO Virus.

Lora Flannigan has sought to conform to the rules throughout her eighteen years, but now she stands on the brink of a prestigious pairing with a high-caste young man. Accepting the match will change her lower-class circumstances and also help her hard-working father, who’s sacrificed so much for her since her mother’s suicide.

But Lora never counted on the sparks that ignite when she meets her intended’s striking brother—the fact that he has secrets which are directly entangled with his brother and even her own life only makes him all the more intriguing. But before she’s managed to make sense of her feelings, he’s embroiled her in the rebellion underworld.

It turns out that Lora’s perfect memory is exactly what the rebels need in order to infiltrate VaxWell and discover their sinister purposes, and the rebellion itself may also be the key to the secrets mounting in Lora’s own life.

As Lora’s involvement in the rebellion deepens, more and more shocking discoveries emerge to challenge everything Lora believes.

And when still darker truths come to light, Lora realizes the purpose behind not only her advantageous pairing… but her very existence.

Grab your copy of The Pairings (The Pairings Book One) at www.ramonafinn.com

EXCERPT

You can do this one last time, I thought to myself while staring at the biomod kiosk station. Other teens rushed by me to get into the domed glass structure as quickly as possible. It was busiest after school, with kids as young as twelve wanting to check their ImmunoAlgorithms before their friends. Their obsession with the kiosks made my stomach churn. I’d tried to avoid them for as long as possible, but I couldn’t today. My score had to be as high as it could be by tomorrow.

I shoved my hair from my shoulders and then dug into the pocket of my navy pants for a bobby pin. There were always at least four of them in any given outfit—I needed them to tame my wild red hair. I twirled a particularly stubborn chunk off the side of my face and pinned it all back. Much better. Still anxious, I smoothed my hands over my shirt and sucked in a breath.

My best friend Jeremy Chan bumped my arm with his. “Are you just going to stand out here all day?” His thick black hair stuck out at all angles as usual. Even though he had the rumpled look down, he was rarely stressed or phased by much.

“Maybe,” I said to him.

The line already pushed to the sidewalk. And across the street, another had formed—as they did at most corners of the kiosk hot spots each afternoon. It didn’t matter if the location was an apartment building or a shopping center; they were the cornerstone of our young lives. The VaxWell corporation made them available to score our immune systems. The score determined how well our vaccines worked against Virus Zero, helping establish if we were worthy of a pairing when we turned eighteen.

“You don’t have to do, this, Lora,” he said.

We stood closer to the curb while the lines outside the station grew. I narrowed my eyes, noticing that frustrated teens were moving away from the docking stations inside—back toward the growing line. It looked like they were out of order; a blinking notice flashed on the kiosk screens.

“I do have to do this,” I said. “You know why.”

Jeremy snorted. “Since when do you care about the pairings?”

“I can’t disappoint Dad.” The only reason we were alive was because of the immunizations, and the pairings were a way to keep the virus from spreading and taking out the rest of humanity. My mother had committed suicide because she couldn’t stand the world we’d lived in since Zero had decimated the country. I had to work with the system instead of against it, or else my dad might fear losing me, too. The pairing would set me on the right course for the rest of my life.

“The paired sound like they have miserable lives anyway,” he said, hoping I would agree with